Scott Simon: That singular voice can
only belong to Katharine Hepburn. And maybe Kate Mulgrew. For most
of Miss Mulgrew's career, as a young actor on the soap opera "Ryan's Hope",
as the brainy Boston City Coucillor on "Cheers", on stage as Hedda Gabler
and then these last seven years as Captain Janeway on "Star Trek: Voyager",
critics and fans have seen a wide streak of Kate Hepburn in Kate Mulgrew.
Kate Mulgrew as Kate Hepburn has finally happened. Miss Mulgrew is portraying
Katharine Hepburn at the Hartford Stage in Hartford Connecticut in the
one woman play "Tea at Five" by Matthew Lombardo. The play's run
has been extended through March 17th and will pick up again April 8th through
13th. Kate Mulgrew joins us now from Hartford, and thanks so much
for being with us.

KATE MULGREW: What a pleasure to talk
to you Scott.

Scott Simon: Have you felt a sense of
identity with Katharine Hepburn over the years because of the superficial
and maybe not so superficial similarities people have so helpfully pointed
out?

KATE MULGREW: I have not. And
I think that this is particularly interesting. I wouldn't say that I felt
an antipathy towards her, that would be too strong. But when you're likened
to someone as frequently as I have been to Hepburn you develop a sort of
dismissive feeling about it. "Thank you very much, yes, I'm like Katharine
Hepburn, that's terrific, and let's get on." But the key, and the thing
that I've found which has been most compelling to me and moving to me is
I never thought that I would love her. However if you're going to be total,
in this kind of a play you do have to love. And it's a peculiar feeling
because she's not particularly lovable.

Scott Simon: Hmmm. I've got to
ask you to follow up on that. She's more admirable than lovable?

KATE MULGREW: No question. As all icons
are. You see glimpses of her vulnerability in all of her pictures and some
of her documentaries and even some of her writing. But glimpses.
And one wonders immediately is she playing? Is that acting?
Is that just part of the fascinating Hepburn that she wanted so desperately
to create. The reality is that she was deeply vulnerable and that
is all together a different thing to realize on the stage. It cannot be
played, it must be felt. Particularly, I would say, in act two where I
am seventy-six and in a very reflective mood, and at certain points in
that act I have to go very deeply indeed into her, her history, into her
childhood – the death – suicide of her older brother, much loved brother
Tom. Her, I would say, very complicated, complex relationships with her
parents. And again at thirty-one. The vulnerability of the agitated
and very frightened thirty-one year old actress who is now 'box office
poison' in Hollywood.

Scott Simon: We should explain.
First act – the two acts, act one and act two are separated by about forty-five
years.

KATE MULGREW: That is correct.

Scott Simon: The first opens in September
of 1938 after she has won her first Oscar, but is considered as you said
'box office poison', and the second is in February of 1983 and she has
suffered a car crash.

KATE MULGREW: That's correct.

Scott Simon: What movie was it that
broke Katharine Hepburn's losing streak?

KATE MULGREW: It was "Philadelphia Story".
Changed everything. First she did the play, and then they… and of course
in her contract she said if they want to make a movie out of this it's
going to star 'yours truly'. And I will choose my leading men and
I will, in essence, produce this film. And that's exactly what she
did.

Scott Simon: It seems to me that I've
been told over the years that it's sometimes more physically demanding
to play an elderly character as you do playing the older Katharine Hepburn,
than it can be to play a younger one, maybe against all expectations.

KATE MULGREW: Curiously enough in this piece,
the young Kate is physically much more demanding and the old Kate is vocally
much more demanding because I am capturing, or trying to capture her voice.
And it's a trick Scott. I have to trick my vocal chords. And
Hepburn herself settled her voice (imitates Hepburn) 'right in the middle
of her throat. It's right in her larynx you know, so I have to do that
for an hour and it sometimes very difficult because' I can't rely on my
diaphragm, I have to go into my throat and I have to look for the energy
to come from someplace else. So that's been quite a challenge, but a great
one.

Scott Simon: Speaking as an actor, what
made Katharine Hepburn so compelling. Do you have a new appreciation for
that now?

KATE MULGREW: I do. You know she
often said 'it was my job to be fascinating. To make this creature fascinating'.
So she, I believe, stepped outside of herself from the very beginning,
and worked on herself as a business. And that is how she addressed herself
when she marched into Hollywood in her trousers and sandals. No actually,
her four inch heels, so she could tower over those 'vulgar moguls' as she
puts it. And I think that that is how she led her life. And
of course, you know as well as I do that what she has been masterful at
is concealing her private life. She has allowed only what she thinks is
palatable to be exposed, and the rest will forever be hidden in her heart.
And I really believe that it is in her heart alone that the truth lies
buried. I have tried so hard to get to the essence of her relationship
with Spencer Tracy.

Scott Simon: How would you characterize
that long standing relationship with Spencer Tracy?

KATE MULGREW: Ummm… I can play it so
much better than I can articulate it. Isn't that always the way?
Ambiguous. She would say he was the great love of her life, and yet
I believe that the intimacy of their relationship was probably rather short
lived. He lived with and honoured his wife Louise Treadwell until
the day he died. So I think for Hepburn – she wanted desperately for the
world to think that this was a great love affair so I think that is probably
where it should rest.

Scott Simon: In the end, what do you end up
loving about her?

KATE MULGREW: John Tillenger the director
called it feistiness. But I say – I say 'chops'. You know she is
self deprecating in her suffering. By God she is going to go down
with her secrets buried and her mettle intact, and that is what she did
and I think she did it with power, no little grace, and as I say again,
vulnerability which as you know is the revelation of the human heart.

Scott Simon: Thank you very much for
speaking with us.

KATE MULGREW: Thank you Scott.

Scott Simon: Speaking with us from the
studios of WNPR in Hartford, Connecticut, Kate Mulgrew. Her run in
"Tea at Five" in which she plays Katharine Hepburn at the Hartford Stage
through March 17th, this Sunday, then picks up again from April 8th to
the 13th.